Fire shuts down Catania Airport until Wednesday

Hot weather red alert is in place on the island of Sicily

Catania International Airport will not operate until 14:00 on Wednesday, 19 July, as reported by the management of the flight facility. The reason behind the unusual situation is a fire that broke out in the departure terminal on Sunday night.

The fire was extinguished, however, there is still ongoing investigation into the reason why it started at all. That’s why the authorities have decided to suspend flights to and from the airport for two days.

The airport advises passengers to check the status of their flight with the operating airlines. According to Euronews, some incoming flights will be diverted to other airports in Sicily, such as Palermo or Comiso. It’s also still unclear whether passengers will get compensation for the unexpected delays and inconveniences caused by this.

Heatwave Charon is on

Catania is a major gateway to the tourist attractions of Eastern Sicily, such as Mount Etna, Taormina and Syracuse. However, experts are already speculating that the island will be quite unhospitable for tourism this week due to ongoing sweltering weather caused by successive heatwaves.

Last week, the Cerberus heatwave scorched Southern Europe and this week it will be Charon, both of these are actually the names of the anticyclones that cause the heatwaves. And both have names of characters from Ancient Greek mythology. Charon was the boatman ferrying the souls of dead people across the River Styx into the underworld.

In the coming days, temperatures might reach the brain-boiling 48 degrees Celsius! Two years ago, in August, the island saw a record-breaking temperature of 48.8 degrees.

The average temperature in Italy could surpass 42 degrees this week, which would also be a record in itself. The last highest average temperature was logged in 2005, set in the summer of 2007.

Most of the Mediterranean country is under red code alert for hot weather.